This Is Not A Mosquito

Hedgehog · Jun 13, 2015

This Is Not A Mosquito!! Look closely.....Incredible
Have you ever wished you could be a fly on the wall to spy on what's going on or being said?
No, this isn't a real mosquito. It's an insect spy drone for urban areas, already in production, funded by the US Government. It can be remotely controlled and is equipped with a camera and a microphone. It can land on you, and even has the potential to take a DNA sample or leave RFID tracking nanotechnology on your skin. It can fly through a slightly open window, or it can attach to your clothing until you unwittingly take it into your home. It can then be guided to the top of a curtain or other invisible location where it can scope entire rooms and monitor everything being said. Given the current push for surveillance cameras to be everywhere, one is left with little doubt that there are plans for these micro gadgets.

Bootie · Jun 13, 2015

The specific mosquito-like object pictured above is, however, just a conceptual mock-up of a design for a MAV, not a photograph of an actual working device "already in production." And although taking DNA samples or inserting micro-RFID tracking devices under the skin of people are MAV applications that may some day be possible, such possibilities currently appear to be speculative fiction rather than reality.

The technical challenges of creating robotic insects are daunting, and most experts doubt that fully working models exist yet. "If you find something, let me know," said Gary Anderson of the Defense Department's Rapid Reaction Technology Office.

Getting from bird size to insect size is not a simple matter of making everything smaller.

"You can't make a conventional robot of metal and ball bearings and just shrink the design down," said Ronald Fearing, a roboticist at the University of California at Berkeley. For one thing, the rules of aerodynamics change at very tiny scales and require wings that flap in precise ways — a huge engineering challenge. Scientists have only recently come to understand how insects fly.

Even if the technical hurdles are overcome, insect-size fliers will always be risky investments. "They can get eaten by a bird, they can get caught in a spider web," Professor Fearing said.